Brackets of this kind are particularly used in the automobile industry for car body construction, for example in order to hold components firm during assembly or to automatically restrain metal sheets that are to be welded to each other. In the course of an assembly line, a plurality of clamping brackets may therefore be arranged on fixing plates or carriers. Each of these clamping brackets must be designed and constructed according to the required spatial arrangement of the clamping point. Kits for assembling a modular bracket for this purpose are already available (for example vide EP 828 686 B1, EP 804 996 B1, DE 297 17 355 U1, DE 299 00 500 U1, and DE 101 06 903 C1).
A tripartite kit including a base part, pipe support and a head part is described in EP 828 586 B1. The length of the pipe support is cut to suit as required to adapt the bracket to the necessary height. A number of pipe pieces with graded lengths and existing thread bores for fixing to a base piece and a headpiece are available in general. A continuous fine adjustment, particularly of the height of the clamping point after installation of the pipe support, is not provided for therein.
With the kit according to DE 297 17 355 U1, an exchangeable adjusting plate of variable thickness is provided for to adapt the height between base part and support. Likewise, DE 101 06 903 C1 provides for firmly connecting the head part to the pipe support by the aid of an insertion piece and an exchangeable fitting pin after having laid one or more spacers onto the upper end of the pipe support. Apart from adjusting the height by means of the spacers, it also allows for aligning the head part by a given angle in a direction that is orthogonal to the pipe support. However, it does not allow either for an exact fine adjustment after installation.
The kit for assembling a modular clamping bracket according to DE 299 00 500 U1 provides for that the head part can optionally be adjusted in its angles around the central longitudinal axis of a fixing screw with respect to the pipe support and that it can be fixed by the aid of at least one cylindrical pin. But for this purpose, a fixing plate with a central thread bore for the fixing screw is welded into the upper end of the pipe support. Manufacture and mounting of this fixing plate to the pipe support is relatively costly.
Finally, the EP 804 996 B1 discloses a clamping kit system and a method for adjusting a basic length, wherein the base part and the head part are connected to each other by means of detachable threaded bolts and wherein the passage bores in the base part and head part are by a few millimeters larger than the diameter of a fitting shaft provided for at the threaded bolt. These enlarged diameters make it possible to achieve a fine adjustment of the basic length by means of set screws between base part and pipe support and/or between pipe support and head part after the base part and head part have been loosely screwed together with the pipe support. Twisting between the base part and pipe support and/or pipe support and head part around the longitudinal axis of the pipe support is not possible, because the pipe support has a mainly rectangular cross-section.